- We uncover the benefits of fitness marketing funnels and give you examples of how you can implement them today, be it on your website, your social media, or your blog
- The goal of the first step is to get them aware of who you are and what you know by offering a free helpful guide, video or consultation.
- The buying cycle is different and some leads need to be nurtured.
A sad statement of truth is that you could be the best personal trainer in the world and do worse financially than a terrible personal trainer who is a good marketer. You might think “I did not get into the personal training business to be a marketer, but I got into the personal training business to help people.”
That is fine and good but just think about it from a numbers standpoint. The average personal trainer who is a good marketer may help 100 clients in the month reach their personal fitness goal. You, as an excellent personal trainer but a poor marketer, may only help 20 or 30 people toward their fitness goals. At the end of the day, who is having a more powerful impact?
Watch the video below for tips on mapping out your funnel.
That’s why in this post we are going to show you the benefits of fitness marketing funnels and give you examples of how you can implement them today, be it on your website, your social media, or your blog.
Our goal is to get people interested in your business by providing them something of value no matter where they are on their buyer’s journey. We want to show them how they can connect with your business.
By the end of this post, you’ll have a basic understanding of how to build a successful inbound marketing funnel. Let’s get into it.
Funnel Number 1: Awareness
Most personal trainers are interested in selling the product and bombarding a cold audience with their Facebook ads, etc. This doesn’t work. Just think about it, you are walking on the street and a complete stranger comes up to you and tells you to buy their product. You don’t know this person from Adam. So what are you going to do, ignore them or run away from them?
The awareness funnel is designed to help you build trust and rapport with people you have never met with the goal of eventually offering them your product. This is something that takes time, and this is why a lot of people don’t like it.
The first thing you have to do is get traffic to show what you are offering. A lot of the traffic is going to come from Facebook and social media as well as those who subscribe to your email.
If you create a blog that your niche market enjoys, for example, if you are training people for triathlons and you write a blog about long-distance running, you are going to build a fan base and make them aware that you exist.
The second thing you are going to do is make them an offer. In your blog for long-distance runners, you might have a link that takes them to a landing page that offers “10 Stretches to Prevent Cramps While Running.” Of course, anyone who wants to improve their long-distance running is going to click on the link that offers them this is valuable information for free.
Let’s say they take the offer, they put in their email, and they download your e-book (see how to below with Canva) or your brochure. Now you can send them a series of emails that offer a value stream, like tips on dieting for long-distance runners, interviews with long-distance runners, etc.
In these tips that you email, include links for soft offers, like to join your Facebook group, etc. This allows you to organize your leads.
Takeaway
The goal of the first step is to get them aware of who you are and what you know by offering a free helpful guide, video or consultation. This should be done with ZERO expectation of return. The more you can automate this the better. Videos and online content is highly scalable, personal consultations are not.
Funnel Number 2: Consideration
Here is where you capitalize on the leads that you garnered during the Awareness Funnel. It’s not uncommon for you to have some people who have never met you but who are considering using the services of a personal trainer fall into the Consideration Funnel as well.
They may find your business on Facebook or Google and may like the services that you offer and your prices. These people are potential clients.
Now, it’s time for you to make an offer. You may include a testimonial of a client who you worked with and helped achieve a particular goal in a triathlon. After the testimonial, you may present a call to action that invites your potential clients to sign up for a webinar that can help them improve their triathlon training.
If a potential client clicks on the link to learn about your webinar, you could give them a side-by-side case study that compares the results your clients had before using your service and what they had after using your service.
It’s now time to organize your leads. You have sent a couple of emails and now you are directing your potential clients to a third of funnel where they have to decide whether they are going to use your service or not.
In this stage, you are giving your clients emails that have success stories and other viable resources that show your potential client that you have what it takes to solve their problem and help them reach their triathlon goals.
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Takeaway
Think of this step as the foot in the door. It’s important to get your potential clients to do something. That something can be anything from signing up for a free course, a webinar or paying for an initial consultation call.
Funnel Number 3: Decision
We are now at the final stage of the buyer’s journey. You have made your clients aware of you, and you have given them a product of value in exchange for their email address or contact information, which in turn has allowed you to organize their contact information. It’s time to get your clients to decide.
The best traffic to convert is going to come from your retargeting campaign. These are the people that you have met and interacted with online, via email, or on social media.
Many of these individuals have read your case study, watched your webinar, and downloaded the free information that you offered them. You may also get a few cold leads from your social networks, like Facebook and Instagram. Even though they did not go through the awareness and consideration funnels, they are ready to decide.
In this funnel, the offers that you make are designed to get people to buy. They should offer free trials, purchasing guides, and other entryways that do not cost a ton of money or ton of time.
For example, you may have a visitor at the decision stage, so you offer them a seven-day triathlon training session for free after which they can decide whether or not they want to continue working with you.
At this stage of the funnel, you want to personally interact with your client. Remember, this is personal training, so your client is going to have unique circumstances that they want to explain to you over the phone or face-to-face. Here you are able to build on the report that you established.
Takeaway
The last step of the funnel is the most important. It’s important to know that some people will make a purchase right away while others need to be slowly convinced. In other words, the buying cycle is different and some leads need to be nurtured.
Final Thoughts
There you have it, a basic idea on how you can move people through the different stages of the buyer’s journey. Not everyone is going to start at the same stage. You may have some people who Google you, they are ready to go, and they hopped in on the decision stage. Other people have never heard of you and so you will first have to make them aware of who you are.
Testing your completed funnel is important to avoid broken pages or slow loading pages.
Take a look at sites like Aussie Hosting to check the speed of your host prior to signing up for any cheap hosting, otherwise, an image/video heavy funnel will greatly affect conversions. It takes time and effort, but it’s worth it. Good personal training business is going to be able to feed you and your family for a number of years, so put in the work and see the results.
Is there anything we’ve missed in this beginner’s guide?
One great tool to jumpstart your funnel is Exercise.com’s Performance Health Assessment. Schedule a demo below and let our team show you how.